Madison Mooney

AP English Lang

Mrs. Wilhelmus

3 August, 2013

Prompt #3

            In Sophie's Choice there has been many examples of religion and philosophy contradicting one another. Except in the "Middle Ages" chapter where they are brought together and philosophy is Christianized by Aquinas and St. Augustine. These philosophers felt the need to Christianize because the society felt that the philosophical claims they made were hurting the Christian faith.

            Aquinas believed that Christendom and philosophy often said the same thing, he also believed in the natural theological truths. Which meant that what we believe to be true could be reached through our own innate reason and through the Christian faith. Aquinas also believed there were two paths to God. One was through our reason and our senses and the other was through faith and the Christian revelation. He believed there should not be any conflict between Aristotle's philosophy and the Christians because they both ultimately believed in there being one truth, or one God.

            As for St. Augustine, he was the first philosopher to even draw history into his philosophy. He believed that God had created the world out of nothing and before the world there were just ideas floating around in the "Divine Mind". Which is where Plato came in. St. Augustine found the Platonic ideas on God and by tying them into his own beliefs he was able to preserve the Platonic view of eternal ideas. By doing this he showed that  not only he but many other Church Fathers would do anything to bring the Greek and Jewish thought back together.